Make blueshield timelocked

[bruhguy1111]

Blueshield shouldnt be a karma locked role, it actually requires departamental knowledge and some combat experience, locking it behind "good rp" points makes no sense for the role personally, its a small thread but what do yall think about it.

Edited February 10, 2022 by bruhguy1111
reads better now

[bruhguy1111]

this is the wrong place i didnt mean to post it here, and i dunno how to delete it, oh well

[Rythen]

I moved this topic to the suggestions section for you.

What department are you suggesting would be the time requirement for Blueshield?

Possible departments:

Security - Blueshield isn't security and while they have security equipment I feel like putting a security time requirement in front of them would give players the impression that they ARE an extension of security.  Security is all about hunting down antagonists whereas Blueshield is just about ensuring heads are safe.  Usually they ensure this by monitoring the heads, doing first aid, or stepping in to defend the command member until security arrives.

Medical - You just need to be able to use basic first aid on people, this is pretty simple and doesn't require much medical department knowledge.  Any advanced treatment or surgery shouldn't really be getting done by the Blueshield except in extreme emergencies but even then I'm fine with a Blueshield not being a medical expert RP-wise.

Research, Service, Supply, Silicon - I think the reason these departments wouldn't make sense is self explanatory.

Command time - If it were decided to go this route then I think this is what would make the most sense.  Blueshield acts as both an advisor and a bodyguard so them being familiar with some of the command positions is relevant.  Playing command also would give you exposure to other people who play Blueshield to get some familiarity with the role itself.

Server time (non-departmental) - I don't think this makes sense really.  If you play a cargo tech for X amount of hours you may not have even come across a Blueshield much.

To Karma or Not:

Personally, I feel that Blueshield and NTR are two jobs that are actually good candidates to remain as karma jobs.  They are both RP-heavy jobs and both are jobs that are what I would consider "optional" to the station.

My preference would personally be to keep them as karma jobs but if we were to move to a departmental time requirement then I think Command time would be the only departmental time that makes sense for them.

Curious to hear thoughts from others.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Rythen

[Shmabu]

I think of the timelock options, all have an issue of not preparing the blueshield for their position properly. Along with what Rythen said above about security, I think:

Playing the RD for example to unlock blueshield makes absolutely zero sense to me. The job is not generally providing combat experience or medical experience, the main aspects of the blueshield along with situational awareness, which I believe RD could gain more so than the others by monitoring a department properly. However, speedrunning from crew, to scientist, to RD, to blueshield doesn't seem like a viable option. Along with these issues, the RD is most often the head who spends the least time with the blueshield. HOP also has simular issues relating to combat experience and medical experience. Other heads have issues as well, but I won't go into them.

While I know many do not like the idea of whitelists, I believe that Blueshield is one of a few roles that could benefit from being a whitelist role.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Shmabu

[Vallidian]

If you think about it, karma locking a job is loosely time-locking a job. Since you need to be active and contributing to the round (for the most part) to get karma to unlock it.

It's also worth asking, to what end? Why time lock it?

If it's keep people who are inexperienced from playing it. Then the counter argument is, how else are you expected to get experience in that role?

The two jobs Blueshield has similarities to are Security for the combat reason, but you're not security. And medbay, but really just the paramedic where you stabilize the VIP to get them to Medbay where THEY fix them.

 

I personally wanna hear more of your suggestion given our counter arguments.

[bruhguy1111]

1 hour ago, Shmabu said:

While I know many do not like the idea of whitelists, I believe that Blueshield is one of a few roles that could benefit from being a whitelist role.

I agree with you on this, whitelisting would also be a good choice, but if timelocking is an option maybe 50 hours as captain or something could work as well, now that i look at it neither sec nor medical whitelisting makes sense for blueshield, however command definetly does, either command or captain would be good, or as suggested, whitelisting, anything is better than a role being unlocked by you having a big metagang lol

[Charliminator]

IMO karma is an awful system that literally requires its own rules to prevent exploitation. 

anything that moves us further away from this system is a good idea. 

I do think time locking it to security would be 100% fine. HOS level playtime in security would fit it fairly well.

[AffectedArc07]

1 hour ago, Vallidian said:

If you think about it, karma locking a job is loosely time-locking a job. Since you need to be active and contributing to the round (for the most part) to get karma to unlock it.

Regular time locks cant be exploited, you have to actually engage with the round

 

Karma on the other hand just requires you to have a large metagang. You can have 0 security hours and just get 30 karma from being a science powergaming meme. 

[Vallidian]

2 minutes ago, AffectedArc07 said:

You can have 0 security hours and just get 30 karma from being a science powergaming meme. 

Yes but we still circle back around to what the point is of time-gating it? You still won't get experience without actually doing the thing. It's like jobs requiring job experience to get the job like hello how do I get job experience if you won't hire me to get the experience.

[Charliminator]

10 hours ago, Vallidian said:

what the point is of time-gating it?

What's the point in time gating any role by the same logic

You can't get HOS experience without paying HOS so let everyone play HOS.

Experience is transferable.

What's the point in karma gating it?

[Arkhip0v]

Sec+Med sounds kind of like a good idea but then you may have people who have little understanding of the way Command works, and Blueshield is often used as an informal advisor when there is no NTR/similars aboard the station, as the Blueshield is almost always in near-constant contact with the Captain.

 

If you restricted it to Command time, pretty much anyone with enough experience in Command would know how to heal people and also have atleast a sufficient understanding of what's appropriate force. I'd hope.

 

A couple of people in OOC chat mentioned potentially timelocking it to Head of Security. Not sure what I think about that myself.

[AffectedArc07]

On 2/13/2022 at 12:01 AM, Arkhip0v said:

A couple of people in OOC chat mentioned potentially timelocking it to Head of Security.

Not possible

[Skajaw]

Timelocking the HoS is IMO not a good idea, at least not if its just "play X hours as security". You could just play X hours as detective and become eligible to play HoS.

But thats not the topic. I recently unlocked blueshield so I'll share my thoughts. (Dont crush me, its the first time i write that kind of stuff and i am bad with words :P)

Do I think blueshield should not be a karma role?  No. My problem with karma is that its inconsistent. One person may take hundreds of hours to get his 30 karma to unlock BS. Another person could just be lucky by having a very good round or two as antag and getting tons of karma from ghosts watching him, even though he's pretty new to the server. So the only possible, if necessary restriction we have on paradise, is playtime and i think that some time based requirement for the BS should exist. A whole other approach could be something like "you have to write an application to get the BS role unlocked by an admin for you" buts thats to extreme i guess.

Which department experience can come in handy depends on the situation you're in as BS. I got most of my playtime from Medical. Does it help me to be a better BS? Not really. I can patch up some scratches here and there, but if a head gets beaten to death and I recover their body to bring it to medbay, my jobs ends there. If there would be no doctor though, my medbay playtime would be very valuable cause i know how to bring any dead body back to live and fix any injury.

I never played as security officer, very rarely as antag. I have very little combat experience and therefore dont know the best ways on how to react in different situations. For example what do I do when a group of 2-3 people charges the bridge and I am alone with the captain. Or how do I approach maints where the HoS is getting killed  probably just me against well armed antags, in a dark and tight corridor. Becoming a robust and experienced Security player would definetly help me out there. But it wouldnt be my job to stop the bad guys and arrest them, I just want to grab the body and get the hell out of there, so again, having the experience would be good (cause experience is never bad) but its just not my job to do an officers work.

And thats just he bodyguard part of the BS. He is always with the heads and beeing asked for advise. IMO a BS player must know the basics of each department. Even though science knowledge might not be good for anything the BS does, he should be alarmed when the RD decides to build combat mechs on green alert or hands out anti-drop implants without consulting the HoS. He should know the basic dos and donts of the command roles to give the best advise he can.

 

At the end its the same with every other job so, you will be a better BS if you play BS and learn things by doing them. I should come to an end though, soo Tl;DR:

Karma? No. Playtime? Yes. What departments? All of them. How many hours? Hard to say, 10-15h or so. 

[Xyd]

I'm aligned with Rythen's views; if Blueshield were to be timelocked, Command seems to be the best focus. 

Timelocking it to security is only going to encourage Redshields. 

The rest of the departments are irrelevant and some of the points mentioned about departmental knowledge can be acquired through general playtime and knowledge of the rounds from experience alone.

Blueshield is also a advisory role so knowing how command operates for the most part is important here.

I don't know if its possible but gatekeeping Blueshield/Rep behind the Karma system and timelocking it as well might be worth checking out if you really want these roles to be a little harder to get than the rest.

And honestly; the quest to come up with a system to encourage: Robust/Knowledgeable/Roleplay-centric qualities into those roles from players is a fruitless one. Regardless of whether it is timelocked, karma or both, you will still get the occasional redshield or the argumentative mouthpiece that sometimes transpires on the bridge. I don't know if anything can mitigate that other than short of whitelisting the role. 

What we have now is not ideal but timelocking it either won't change much. If Karma system does go bye-bye then the Command focus I feel is the best route with that.

[ID404NotFound]

Why is there a concern for making sure anyone who approaches the role is 100% perfected and trained beforehand?

In a normal scenario, someone who is interested in blueshield usually observes how blueshields do their thing, or has a good enough idea of what is needed from the wiki page, and once they've unlocked, giving it a try. They might not do everything perfect, but in a reasonable scenario, they try.

Yes, there are people who unlock a role, don't actually read up or anything, and don't do a good job. If they are not doing so horribly to not break server rules, is this an issue? They still have chances to be instructed by others seeing what they are doing, given tips of how to proceed, especially when they find themselves dead, and ghosts chime in.

People who aren't good, while 'annoying' to people who want an all-pro-player-staff, will either learn, or be filtered out, I don't believe time barriers to help this, as there are definitely still special people who bubble up to captain and HoP by being incredibly minimal in command roles, shirking any real duties.

[Rythen]

4 hours ago, ID404NotFound said:

In a normal scenario, someone who is interested in blueshield usually observes how blueshields do their thing, or has a good enough idea of what is needed from the wiki page, and once they've unlocked, giving it a try. They might not do everything perfect, but in a reasonable scenario, they try.

This is a good point and I actually think the fact that someone is deciding to spend karma on the job actually makes them more likely to have looked into what they are unlocking vs. someone who randomly unlocked it by playing long enough.

[ID404NotFound]

time locks and karma locks will never really guarantee the outcome of a player, it's how our community reacts and encourages behaviours, either by admins striking down bad behaviours, or just regular players praising the good, and giving tips to each other to improve and keep working towards better. It's at it's best when we can hear how to improve our craft instead of "wow you suck, read SoP idiot"

[Mitchs98]

On 2/17/2022 at 3:52 AM, Skajaw said:

Timelocking the HoS is IMO not a good idea, at least not if its just "play X hours as security". You could just play X hours as detective and become eligible to play HoS.

But thats not the topic. I recently unlocked blueshield so I'll share my thoughts. (Dont crush me, its the first time i write that kind of stuff and i am bad with words :P)

Do I think blueshield should not be a karma role?  No. My problem with karma is that its inconsistent. One person may take hundreds of hours to get his 30 karma to unlock BS. Another person could just be lucky by having a very good round or two as antag and getting tons of karma from ghosts watching him, even though he's pretty new to the server. So the only possible, if necessary restriction we have on paradise, is playtime and i think that some time based requirement for the BS should exist. A whole other approach could be something like "you have to write an application to get the BS role unlocked by an admin for you" buts thats to extreme i guess.

Which department experience can come in handy depends on the situation you're in as BS. I got most of my playtime from Medical. Does it help me to be a better BS? Not really. I can patch up some scratches here and there, but if a head gets beaten to death and I recover their body to bring it to medbay, my jobs ends there. If there would be no doctor though, my medbay playtime would be very valuable cause i know how to bring any dead body back to live and fix any injury.

I never played as security officer, very rarely as antag. I have very little combat experience and therefore dont know the best ways on how to react in different situations. For example what do I do when a group of 2-3 people charges the bridge and I am alone with the captain. Or how do I approach maints where the HoS is getting killed  probably just me against well armed antags, in a dark and tight corridor. Becoming a robust and experienced Security player would definetly help me out there. But it wouldnt be my job to stop the bad guys and arrest them, I just want to grab the body and get the hell out of there, so again, having the experience would be good (cause experience is never bad) but its just not my job to do an officers work.

And thats just he bodyguard part of the BS. He is always with the heads and beeing asked for advise. IMO a BS player must know the basics of each department. Even though science knowledge might not be good for anything the BS does, he should be alarmed when the RD decides to build combat mechs on green alert or hands out anti-drop implants without consulting the HoS. He should know the basic dos and donts of the command roles to give the best advise he can.

 

At the end its the same with every other job so, you will be a better BS if you play BS and learn things by doing them. I should come to an end though, soo Tl;DR:

Karma? No. Playtime? Yes. What departments? All of them. How many hours? Hard to say, 10-15h or so. 

 

For the record, HoS is already timelocked.

 

That said. I've never really seen the Blueshield been asked for advice on how to run the station.  Nor would I really say it's a big part of their job. The NTR is the Command advisory role, not the Blueshield.

[Xyd]

10 hours ago, Mitchs98 said:

 

For the record, HoS is already timelocked.

 

That said. I've never really seen the Blueshield been asked for advice on how to run the station.  Nor would I really say it's a big part of their job. The NTR is the Command advisory role, not the Blueshield.

I see it a lot. I find it is the majority of Blueshields who do it. I tend to do it myself only if asked, rather than offering it or if I see someone who is inexperienced in what needs to be done at round start, I try to help them out, as there may not be a NT Rep around plus Blueshield is usually nearby more than the Rep.

I think there's a difference between offering alternative suggestions or helpful advice compared to being an opinionated Blueshield who butts into an argument between Command, the latter of which doesn't tend to be welcome on the bridge.

[Sonador]

The only time I offer advice (or worse, make command decisions) as a blueshield is if A) it's immediately material to otherwise getting a/the command member I'm guarding injured or killed, ("Captain, please stop trying to chase the ling into maints. Let security handle it. Please.") or B) All of command is dead and I have to venture into an unsurvivable combat situation to retrieve them (usually means I'll be trying to rally security to accompany me i.e.: making HoS decisions) or they all are totally off-sensors and missing and I am the only person with bridge access in a time of crisis and trying to stabilize the situation is my best bet of things getting sane enough to recover them without getting instantly murdered myself. Trying to play command or inform command as blueshield is hell and not something that's encouraged given nobody's subordinate to you. If I tell the captain not to run into maints after a ling alone and he decides to anyway, that's his decision, I'm not going to try to drag him away from it, it just means I'll probably rotate to watching the HoP.

I've made a few mistakes in the heat of the moment, but above all I'm laser-focused on just keeping my heads alive, however bald they may be. If that means informing them from making life-threatening decisions, so be it, they don't have to listen to me.

Trust me, there's a flip to this coin. I've been yelled at by the HoS by replying to people asking if their were swarmers, and eventually bridge-announced by the HoS that I was making it up... because I was replying affirmatively after hearing that same HoS announce from the bridge there was swarmers. It's really not worth advising command or trying to be involved in command operations when you're a handy scapegoat.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Sonador

[AffectedArc07]

Disregard everything about only one department being able to be used for restrictions, I have PR'd a refactor that allows for multiple

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/17442

[SpringSkipper]

I think karma costs should be dramatically reduced to remove most of the incentive to game the system

instead, spending that karma is nice as an actual, conscious choice on the player's part to play a role. They actually say to them at some point "yeah, I'd like to play this role instead of XYZ". They're going to put more effort into it and care more about it as a result. That more than anything is what matters.

That said, I also think clown and mime should be 5 KP jobs like barber is (or even just, like, 3KP). So I think my opinion here is fairly unpopular.

[AffectedArc07]

On 2/24/2022 at 6:33 PM, SpringSkipper said:

I think karma costs should be dramatically reduced to remove most of the incentive to game the system

I plan to make karma jobs a thing of the past. Other members of leadership agree with me, and a lot of us believe your ability to play a job should be dictated by your actual experience, not the size of your metagang. 

 

 

[Sonador]

17 minutes ago, AffectedArc07 said:

I plan to make karma jobs a thing of the past. Other members of leadership agree with me, and a lot of us believe your ability to play a job should be dictated by your actual experience, not the size of your metagang. 

 

 

I've seen this "metagang" thing tossed around a bunch of times now, so to confront this:

Karma trading is punishable by a ban from the karma system and all unlocks already. Why not just ban people trading karma within a metagang if it's negatively impacting the server? Seems like kind of a cop-out to use this as a reason. To be clear, I'm not entirely against phasing out the karma system if it's *only* being abused, but I use it pretty frequently and considering the server's present issue with tidery and hostile players in general, I'd still like a system to ensure only players with the intent to be positive impacts to the round get access to certain jobs and races.

If you really want to get into it? Metagangs are against the server rules. Each round is the same round in terms of story, this is outlined on the wiki. Therefore, people gathering with the same other people to bridge hobo or otherwise hang out is a bannable usage of OOC relationships in IC - there's no IC reason for them to be gathering like that. This isn't to say I'm opposed to it, I'm just saying if you have such a distaste for them you're using them as a reason to rip out a server feature, then maybe the issue lies a little deeper than just OOC friends hanging out.

All karma trades are tracked by a database as it is. Have you considered requiring a reason for supplying karma when given? It's be very easy to spot and handle "They're my friend" and "assdasdasdasd" trades vs. "They saved my life this round" and "They roleplayed with me in the bar."

This really smacks of an issue with the karma system, its usage and oversight, and not what it's controlling to me.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Sonador

[AffectedArc07]

I will keep this short to avoid a thread topic shift

---

3 minutes ago, Sonador said:

To be clear, I'm not entirely against phasing out the karma system if it's *only* being abused

The entire system isn't being phased out, just the jobs part.

 

3 minutes ago, Sonador said:

Have you considered requiring a reason for supplying karma when given?

Would waste time for legitimate awards, and most would just type "RP'd well" for every reason

 

3 minutes ago, Sonador said:

This really smacks of an issue with the karma system, its usage and oversight

Its almost like its awfully designed